In this Appual’s guide, we’re going to show you how to convert your lossless FLAC files to high-quality AAC. Okay, I get it – AAC is free and for everyone. Oh, and one last thing – that ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) format, the lossless version of AAC? Yeah, Apple created it, but its open-source. Its just that people who are somewhat familiar with music coding see “AAC” and immediately think of iTunes / Apple, so for some reason, MP3 remained popular and the format of choice for a lot of people, despite AAC being superior in every way conceivable. Today, your Android device can play AAC without any problems, as can most PC media players. AAC is an international standard that was approved in 1997! Though for some reason, a lot of devices could only play MP3 files back in the late 90s and early 2000s – most likely the manufacturers of these devices were also under the impression that AAC was an Apple-controlled format. So for a long time, people believed AAC was an Apple owned and controlled format, and that the codec was only compatible with Apple products – which is entirely untrue. Apple likes to be on the “cutting edge” of technology, so its no surprise they latched onto AAC when it was declared the successor to MP3 – but Apple does not own or control the AAC format. Well, that’s hard to answer – AAC came out in 1997, 3 years after MP3, and for a long time AAC was mainly associated with Apple – in fact, some people might think it stands for “Apple Audio Codec”, because AAC is the primary format used on iTunes, iPod, etc. If AAC is better than MP3, why is MP3 more popular than AAC? Furthermore, AAC is the only network broadcast audio format that can achieve an “Excellent” rating for all EBU listening test projects. MP3 format these days as their preferred “lossy” format, it’s likely because they don’t know any better – AAC ( Advanced Audio Coding) was actually created as a superior lossy format, and is supported on most audio players ( except strictly MP3-only players, but who uses MP3 players in 2018?).ĪAC achieves better sound quality than MP3 at lower bitrates – a 256kbps AAC sounds better than a 320kbps MP3, and this has been tested by numerous engineers.

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